First Thing You Do When You Start a Forum

When a forum is first set-up, most people go straight to the ACP and get to work on making the forum. What do you do in the ACP when you first start? Others like to go and recruit some people to the forum, start promoting the forum, etc. If you don't go straight to the ACP, what do you do?

I always go to the ACP first. I always want to make my site ready for use before I start promoting. Within the ACP, the first thing I do is set all the settings I need to in the Configuration (MyBB name. Not sure for others.) tab. After that, I set up my usergroups so I can get the permissions right for when I make the actual forums. After that, I find a style that suits my subject. Last and finally, I set up the actual forums (only 3-4 at first) setting Permissions as I go along.
That's all what I do in a couple days' work crammed into 30 seconds of reading time.

 

First thing I do is get to work on creating the forums, then I try to fill them up, and have a appropriate permissions for each usergroup, then I go searching for a nice theme. Then the last thing I do is advertise. You dont want to promote your forum when its in complete.

 

Nice system. What advantages do you gain from making the forums first do I wonder? I've always made them last.

 

No advantages really, just a personal preference doesnt matter anyway as I dont start advertising the forum until its complete so it wouldnt matter in which way I take the steps if you know what I mean.

 

First thing I do: Disable the forum so you don't get any peeking tom or random people register when you don't want them to. Then I start work on the forums & permissions, etc. and then I finish off by working on the mods & style(s), etc.

 

Yea, disabling the board is a good thing to do if you want to keep people out when you are working on your forum.